Books by Gary Graybill

Saturday, June 4, 2016

The Battle of Midway; June 4th, 1942

The Battle of Midway was the most important naval battle of the Pacific
Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months
after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of
the Coral Sea, the United States Navy decisively defeated an Imperial
Japanese Navy attack against Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage
on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan called it "the
most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare."It was
Japan's worst naval defeat in 350 years”.

The Japanese
operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate
the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving
Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force
the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese
dominance in the Pacific.

The Japanese plan was to lure the
United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended
to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive
perimeter in response to the Doolittle Raid. This operation was also
considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji and Samoa.

The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American
reaction and poor initial dispositions. Most significantly, American
codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack,
enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four
Japanese aircraft carriers - Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of
the six carrier force to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor six months
earlier - and a heavy cruiser were sunk at a cost of one American
aircraft carrier and a destroyer. After Midway, and the exhausting
attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's shipbuilding and
pilot training programs were unable to keep pace in replacing their
losses while the U.S. steadily increased its output in both areas.